FEISTY former Birmingham City MD Karren Brady has put her business success down to an immense self-belief that was even evident when she was a toddler.

The no-nonsense businesswoman, now one of Sir Alan Sugar’s sidekicks on The Apprentice and vice-chairman of West Ham, told how she was caught sipping vodka she had daringly taken from a cabinet when she was just three years old.

“My grandfather caught me and asked what I was doing. But I replied that it was my house and I’d do as I want,” she explained in her new book, Strong Woman: Ambition, Grit And A Great Pair Of Heels.

“When you’ve got that streak in you as a toddler, no one’s ever going to able to tell you what to do when you’re fully grown,” she wrote.

That bloody-mindedness continued into her teens – putting up a Vote Labour poster in her bedroom just because her family were Conservatives and staying out all night in London’s seedy Soho district after telling her mom she was staying at a pal’s home. “When everything had closed we would walk around until the Tube restarted early in the morning,” said the businesswoman who is married to former player Paul Peschisolido.

Brady, 42, also explained how her self-assurance impressed future boss and Blues’ boardroom colleague David Sullivan.

She was working as a 19-year-old sales rep for a radio station and wanted to sell advertising to his publishing firm.

Desperate to make an impression, she visited his office and waited for hours to talk to the multi-millionaire. In a bid to clinch a deal she promised that he need not pay for his adverts if they did not improve his sales.

The gamble paid off and Sullivan was soon spending £2 million a year on his advertising with Brady earning more commission than all her colleagues put together. Sullivan then offered her a job and one of football’s most famous partnerships was born.

“That episode may have been a turning point in my professional life, but I think I have been heading that way since I was a young child,” she claimed.